What to Believe?

Performance enhancing drugs have seemingly taken over everything that is special in sports.

Melky Cabrera was suspended 50 games today because he tested positive for testosterone. Out of nowhere, the Melk Man had transformed himself into one of the game’s best players over the past couple of years. He currently leads the MLB in batting with a .346 average.

Steroids…of course.

That’s the easy explanation these days. Anytime something extraordinary happens, it can’t be natural. It is guys like Melky Cabrera that are making people lose faith. As expected, Cabrera was a fan favourite in his first year with the San Francisco Giants. No one could have foreseen him slashing .346/.390/.516 even after a career year with Kansas City in 2011.

I am not going to vilify Melky Cabrera. Oddly enough, he admitted to his wrongful use of performance enhancing drugs. Melky Cabrera is just another example of the sad truth of not only the baseball world, but the sports world as well.

We can’t believe anymore.

In all likelihood, Melky Cabrera isn’t the only star player receiving some sort of unnatural aid. There are others out there that haven’t been caught and will probably never be caught. The technology of the drug is always ahead of the technology to test for it.

The London Olympics brought awe-inspiring moments and moments that you will want to tell your grandchildren about. Seeing Usain Bolt dominant the 100 metre sprint was magical but it was as suspicious as it was magical. No one can be that good, can they? Despite being a 6 foot 5 freak of nature, running that fast with that much ease might be too good to be true.

Shiwen Ye, you know, that Chinese female swimmer who swam her final 50 metres of the 400 IM faster than gold medal winner Ryan Lochte. Ye beat a world record set by those fast swimsuits in Beijing regardless of the fact that she appeared to only swim her hardest for the last 100 metres of the race. Her performance was truly unbelievable but not in a good way.

These days, living by the innocent until proven guilty motto is about as realistic as communism being instituted into western society. It is impossible to have faith in athletes when we are constantly being reminded why we can’t.

Former BALCO owner Victor Conte said to the London Times that the more rigorous drug testing is easy to beat and estimated about 60 percent of the Olympic athletes at the London games were doping. Yeah, you read that right, 60 percent!

Steroids are supposed to be out of baseball yet two of the National League’s best players in the last two seasons have been found to have tested positive for a banned substance. One is being suspended and the other got off on a technicality.

The reason why sports are so appealing to the masses is that we can be amazed at the unbelievable. Most of the general public cannot fathom doing what these athletes can do on a daily basis. Special actions by athletes subsequently create special reactions from fans. However, the enchanting lure of the athlete significantly diminishes when the feat is accomplished through artificial means.

In 2012, the special has become the questionable.

We want to accept what we see as real but when we are given every reason not to accept, it becomes harder and harder. No one enjoys being deceived yet that is the feeling that surfaces every single time an athlete is exposed for using performance enhancing drugs.

This has implications beyond even the All-Star Game MVP–consider the fact that the NL once again has home-field advantage for the World Series because of this now-tainted victory. As a fan of an AL team (Rangers) who could be at a disadvantage in the event of a return to the Series, I feel that now would be a good time for Commissioner Selig to dump this whole misguided attempt to make the All-Star Game more “meaningful,” because that certainly didn’t turn out the way he planned, did it?

Great post, Chris! I certainly hope that too many people won’t lose their love for sports if they start to think that the greatness they’re seeing is all an illusion.

Nice post. It is hard for me to watch the Olympics and sports in general lately. It seems like anabolic steroids, testosterone, etc are a “read between the lines” understanding. Unfortunately, I do not think things will ever change in regards to athletes using enhancers when it comes to competition.

And now we know that Bartolo Colon wasn’t being tested for high cholesterol . Fans are too damn naive to think that baseball has the wherewithal to clean up the goddamn mess they created ! And where are these vocal players in the game who are opposed to the use of steroids within their sport ? They’re as quiet as a god-damn mouse in a church vestibule . What a frigging mess !

The union and league hierarchy are equally to blame for this . One of the main reasons baseball is no longer an Olympic sport . The IOC couldn’t continue to put up with the lame a## excuses from MLB and the game’s international governing body (IFAB) for failing to adopt a comprehensive drug testing policy . It had nothing to do with declining popularity or lack of competition. That was Selig’s spin , rather than his coming across looking like an inept buffoon . Something , which he already is !